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Rabbi Lyon's Blog - 04_24_2015

04/23/2015 06:00 PM
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From the Desk of Rabbi David Lyon
April 24, 2015

In the play "The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time", the main character, a 15 year-old autistic child
observes that the lights of the city of London, where he lives, obscure the
stars in the sky. In the country, he says, you can see the stars. He explains
that a star's light takes 100 million years to reach us. It also means that by
the time its light reaches us, the star has already died. He observes for
himself that seeing stars makes him feel small but not negligible. He also
observes that city lights obscure the stars and also any chance for self perspective.

In Torah this week we read in Leviticus 19,
"You shall be holy for the Lord your God is holy." It's a large
mitzvah filled with great expectations. To be holy as God is holy is
unreachable even if it's a commandment. The rabbis knew it. They didn't presume
to be holy as God is holy, though they did teach that it's appropriate to
aspire to be humanly holy. What does it mean to be humanly holy.

When the rabbis looked at the sky at night,
they saw primarily the same array of stars we see. They saw God's handiwork.
Their evening prayers praised God for bringing on the evening. They were in
awe. They were not made to feel small, rather they found meaning in being
related to the vast array of stars. God created it all. Yet human beings,
unlike stars, were uniquely commanded to aspire to being greater each day. The
rabbis assumed that being human, though related to the vastness of God's
creations, held greater sway than the lights of the night's sky for the very
reason that we were sealed in a covenant with God, which we were conscience of
and ready to respond to by means of mitzvot.

Today, we know what a star is. We know what
its light is, how long it takes to reach us, and how to quantify its place in
the vast array of the universe. We are awed by all these human discoveries of
space. It can humble us in the same way the rabbis were humbled by the distant
lights they observed in the night's sky every night. More than particles in
space given definitions and explanations by astrophysicists and astronomers,
they are part of a remarkable universe that still remains mostly undefined and
certainly mostly unreachable. How can one not feel small before it? How can one
not feel challenged to explore it and wonder what's there and what it means?
It's a matter of science, for sure, but what it means to us is about faith,
which calls on us, no differently than the rabbis of old, to stand in awe of it
all.

A major impediment are the city lights that
obscure our view of the stars. My complaint isn't about city lights. My concern
is about our inability to look up and see something larger than ourselves. It
gets in the way of appreciating that though we really are small and
insignificant in time and space, we are not without meaning. Is it any wonder
that Torah commanded us to be holy like God is holy. The Torah says reach!
Reach for the stars in science and discover the wonders of the vastness of the
universe. And reach for the stars as human beings commanded to find meaning in
what we discover. Those of us who live in the city and have few opportunities
to get to the country to see the lights are more prone to fail to see what is
real. The stars really are far away in space and time. Our life, compared to
the time it's taken to see the stars' light is truly short, but not without
significance. We can stand in awe of the vastness of the universe around us,
and find value in the time we have while we're here to make a positive
difference.

We are not the stars of the world but we can
reach for them. We are not the only wonder of the world but we are the only
creation commanded to seize our sacred duty and participate in its glory.